Hot Coil Challenge: The Dangerous New Internet Fad

CBS Local — It appears at least one millennial has found an “internet challenge” even stupider than eating Tide Pods. A YouTube video showing a man intentionally burning his arm on a stove’s hot coil has been viewed thousands of times and is terrifying parents around the country.

The “Hot Coil Challenge” reportedly requires the foolish participant to press their bare arm against the red hot coils of an active stove top and then posting the proof of their injuries online. A Feb. 4 video of the Hot Coil Challenge submitted by “Blackspider214” has been viewed on YouTube over 380,000 times. While it is one of 34,000 results for the Hot Coil Challenge, the unidentified man is allegedly the only person to go through with the “challenge” on camera.

Warning: Some viewers may find video contents disturbing.

“I hope that my kids are smart enough to know that that’s not a great choice. Even if someone dared them I would hope that they would choose not to do that,” Jennifer Harding, via KHOU.

The man, who was visibly scarred across his entire forearm, has sparked a wave of YouTube videos mocking the stunt, but child counselors still warn that the dangerous prank may still be copied by children and foolish adults. “The biggest role models right now for teens and young people are YouTubers. These are who our kids are looking up to, and they’re going to want to emulate that behavior,” child counselor Eric Goldfield added.

Parents, lawmakers, and medical professionals are still trying to put an end to the Tide Pod Challenge, which has led to a spike of poisonings this year. Poison control centers around the U.S. logged 39 cases of intentional laundry pod “exposures” among teenagers in the first two weeks of 2018, more than the total number of Tide Pod challenge injuries in all of 2016.